In Defense of Flowers
by Luc Court
Summary: Spoilers for Auron, including postYunalesca plot. Fiends, Auron's eye, and a village without Yevon. Due to chapter 2, rated for violence and gore. Finished.
1. Default Chapter

_In Defense of Flowers_

Court: 12.19.02:  
Note: There are two more sections after this, if I actually can manage to get around to finishing them. Yay for chapters. Cornel and everything in it--including my opinion of Auron and his eye--are my own work for the fic, but the game itself belongs to Square. 

SPOILERS FOR FFX re: Auron, up to and including Yunalesca.   
-----------------------------------  


Carnation, violet, daisy. Lily, magnolia.   


Honeysuckle.  


Plants spoke poetry between their stalks. Auron knew them only as a footman might, caring little for the earth save what it would tell him about the path ahead. He had not needed to learn that sparser floral growth meant progression away from water. Common sense had told him that at a young age, but had neglected to inform three of the other students in his class. 

When the senior monks had set them loose in the wild as a test of survival, one had been found raving from dehydration on the plains. Another, half-devoured by the native fiends when he had been too weak to defend himself. Only the youngest of them, little more than a boy with a forelock that refused to stay slicked back, had had the wit to follow the shadows of a canyon in the expectation that a river had helped to carve it.   


He had been correct, but disappointed to find the streambed dry.  


The coasts could also deceive if one thought to trace only plantlife to their banks and neglect the type of growth. At fifteen, Auron had been among those too confident to read the warning in the scraggled grasses until they had broken into sand dunes. He and the other boy with him had screamed until they were hoarse, waving their arms like maddened dancers to attract the attention of a vessel almost out of sight. 

Their mistake had not been as fatal as the others. Civilization clung to that border of salt, and there would always be a sloop out fishing, the crew with one eye on their lines and the other for their own deaths. The water Auron had begged from them was sweet as wine to his throat, and he had returned the flask with reluctance.   


After that, Auron never neglected to keep a watch out for the colors of flowers underfoot. Years later, when he and his pilgrimage companions had tasted dust every time they swallowed, he had used the same trick to find the shore and offer Braska the first sip.  


As dangerous as the oceans were with the risings and tumblings of Sin, humans refused to leave that edge between water and land. They invited destruction in exchange for the blessing of the sea. The twists of their wooden bridges changed every month or more, and still they laughed and played games to keep their minds distracted while they nailed their homes back into shape. Cheap bouquets were set in vases as signs of life and hope. Long before all was rebuilt, the wildflowers would brown and wither and be thrown into the water. Their rotted hearts would break apart on the waves to be taken away by the same beast that had swallowed lives into its maw. 

But not everyone could be born a fisher, a trader, or a blitzball star. Those who had the fate to live inland had to accept the ocean as a rarity, and Sin as occasional. It could be a good life, though dangerous in its own way.

Auron repeated this now to himself as he trudged up the mountain path to the thin banners of grey smudged against the sky.  


In villages where they had to pump water uphill in order to have it at all, a Summoner was a luxury that was even greater than heat. Deaths went unsung save by throats knowing only fragments of prayers, their notes cynical. A sword was more defense against a Fiend than a lyric. 

They knew that lesson well in the cliff towns.  


It was tradition in these wayward villages of Yevon that flowers be placed upon the eyes of the fallen. The language of plants had been born through the troubles of mortality. Merchants in the ports would hawk roses of many colors to residents who thought it quaint to attribute meaning to a plant, but the demand was still high inland for balsam sticks and pressed hyacinth.  


The further in one traveled, away from the shores, the more you would find adherents to the real tradition--that the orbs of one's eyes be removed and the stems placed snugly within the cavities. It was in the hope that any fiends who would later rise might be sightless; disconcerted, kept from recognizing their own forms or the world around them, they might dissolve into pyreflies and be lost without a battle. Usually, they became monsters. _Easier all around if they look like that,_ many would nod, and Auron felt found it hard not to sympathize as he continued to forge ahead in search of a friend that had become a slave and a city that had become a dream.   


Villages like that were as common as ticks on sheepdogs; if a Summoner managed to make it all the way here, they would be as lost as surely as if they embarked on a Pilgrimage. There was always another body to Send, another fiend to try and lay to rest, and only the thin hope that Bevelle would remember to send someone to bury you once you were the last one standing.  


The valley of Cornel was such a place. It was tucked west of the Calm Lands deeply into mountains, and he found it only by trailing the smoke from its huts in the misguided belief that he would find traders to ride with. The temples of Yevon had written it off long ago. They only remembered it existed because of a particular wool blend that appealed to those with rustic fancies. Too much trouble in their opinion to send a priest, though they accepted its sporadic tributes with ease.  


Auron had come after a death.   


The board propped in the center of the rough square had blue paint splashed upon it in a hurry, framing the name of one Joshua and his memorable honors beneath it. As the leading craftsman of Cornel, the village had turned out appropriately to remember him. Garlands were everywhere, woven from any plant on hand and several that had been saved for such events. Their colors and shapes were painfully irregular. The village resembled a garden in progressive states of the seasons, most of it dried. Summer had performed the feat of being warm even in the mountains this year, and the fragrances of the blooms mixed like spoiled fruit in the air.  


The smoke Auron had seen from the road came from the fires placed around the casket. Their fuel was the stalks of water lilies imported long enough ago to have lost all their original color, turned a shy yellow from age. The bundles were spotted dark in places from strawberry leaves hung in clumps.  


Goats bleated arrogant protest when the Guardian had strode into their herd expecting them to make way. In his mind, the animals had no right to block the path. When they seemed about to stand fast and resist, Auron gave a snort to mirror their own and stamped his foot. They fled the man-bull in crimson at that, and the Guardian found himself suddenly wondering when he had acquired gruffness in his repertoire of behaviors. He could guess the source, and the man had looked nothing like a farm beast; only, perhaps, a very shaggy dog.

Auron moved among the thin crowd surrounding the memorial. His steps were as carefully chosen as if he was walking not on stone, but the treachery of a meadow. The wake-robin faces of the villagers parted to accept him in a rustle of their leaves.  


Gossip was as thick on the air as pollen.   


The man was survived only by his child, a daughter of perhaps eight years as the seasons were counted. His wife had passed away some time ago, victim to pneumonia that they had neither the funds nor access to medicine for in order to keep her alive.   


They had left the daughter with a cousin on her mother's side. From what Auron could gather, the girl was named Celsia. The Guardian assumed the choice to be the universal perversity of misguided sire's pride, and only gathered slowly from the whispering that it had been meant to bless her with immortality.  


Three days after they had set the first vigil, binding weeds in clumps about the grave marker to represent the flowers that had gone out of season, the guards at the narrow exits to the village had reported hearing strange, wet noises. They had risen just out of range of the torches. The wind blowing southwards had been fouled with rot.  


They were not superstitious enough in Cornel to pray aloud to Yevon, but the guards all formed a loose circle with their hands when they reported the incidents, muttering low and with their eyes darting to the corners of the hut.  


On the fifth night, when Auron was kicking small stones out of his boots in the wide tent of the communal dining hall, they reported seeing the beast at last.  


"A face like bloody meat," one man kept repeating over and over as they tried to force hot teas down his throat. The two others with him refused to speak save for spurts of description: elongated limbs, a spider's rhythm of crawling. Teeth. Too many teeth, and between them, they could not decide how many mouths either.  


In the confusion surrounding the village, Auron had been pleased to discover that he was almost invisible, despite carrying the rare status of a visitor. No one had tried to force food upon him yet. Pleasure at this was a warm cloak around him as the fire crackled and spat on its meal of dry wood. Lulled into the illusion of privacy, the Guardian was startled to find a man taking the seat across from him.  


"Am I in your way?" A hand still holding the heel of his boot waved at the long table. They ate as a loose community in Cornel; still, Auron suspected that if all the inhabitants sat down at once together, there would remain empty seats in abundance.  


The figure shook his head. In the foliage of shadows and light from the hearth, Auron could see grey in the man's hair. "Not at all." His voice was equal in gravel to the Guardian's own, though not as worn. "I heard we had a traveler, you see. Oraster, the headman of Cornel," he added by way of introduction, and when he extended his hand to clasp Auron's, the Guardian hesitated before letting his own cool fingers touch living ones. 

At the contact, the man grunted.   


"You're chilled still?"   


"The winter gets into one's bones." Ignoring the fact that the season gave him the lie, Auron returned to the task of buckling up his boots once more. "I'll be out of your way by tomorrow's light."  


Oraster nodded. Generations of herdsmen in his blood gave him the instinct to know when not to taunt the wolf. "No, no, feel free to stay." He held his hands up, palms wide in surrender. "We can empty one of the huts and allow you a bed at the very least. We've had so few here that I'm afraid we customarily use our inn to store trade supplies. I admit, I must apologize for the limited hospitality we can offer just now--"  


"It's fine."  


Smoldering wood cracked in the fireplace, broke open, and the sparks rose like pyreflies up the chimney.  


Switching to a different tack then, the headman settled back on the wooden bench. "What are you doing here, traveler? Come from the port cities?"  


"I'm looking for someone." If a city counted as a person, and an Aeon for a friend.   


Oraster had spread his hands at that, surprise clear and yet restrained at polite. "You've come to Cornel for that?" His fingers lowered and returned to touch the table. On one wrist, Auron saw, there was a braided vine of what looked like straw that had been studded with yellow sunflowers. A set of fingers twitched in the direction of the Guardian's greatsword, and the beads shifted. "I should hope that it would be a friend you seek here, and no enemy."   


The warning was clear. Auron bowed his head. "I wish for no disturbances to your people. That I can assure you." The boot went back onto his foot, jarring on the heel and requiring a tug to have it on firmly.   


Silence grew and then devoured the conversation there, sucking on its bones on the hearth. Oraster rose after the last muscle spasm of a word to inform the Guardian of the direction of the guest quarters.  


The women gathered to light torches at the entrance of the tent had been muttering to each other when he left.  


"Should have known he would have been attached..."  


"He won't leave his girl behind."  


"Celsia's too young for this, she shouldn't have to see--"  


"His -wife-," a matron hissed in a tone meant to shut all their mouths, and then Auron had pushed the canvas flap aside to walk into the night.

The skies were clear enough in the mountain ranges to navigate by. Stars revealed themselves in the wild as they would not in the city, and the shape that blotted out Auron's view of them came swiftly enough that he could not draw his sword in time.


	2. Chapter 2

  
The world was a mix of uncatagorized sensations. He had been tackled and pinned by a heavy weight, head spinning from its rap upon the ground. The greatsword pressed against his spine like an iron log. An arm that was the translucent yellow of dried poppies shoved itself against his throat; in the swimming of his vision, Auron thought he could make out the pulse of green veins just beneath the skin. 

The one irregularity with the attack was that the beast on his chest smelled like freshly cut roses.

The guards had been correct to call the thing carrion. As if it had molted layers of skin with each progression away from human form, the creature's head was pursed into ridges. A rounded crest extended back from its forehead like merged horns of the mountain goats. The slipperiness of the carapace foiled Auron's attempt to grab for a hold to push the fiend away. When his hand slid down across its face, it bit him.

His bellow of pain drew the villagers out from the huts, many of them with torches and even more with weapons. The fiend worried its jaws from side to side like a dog with a particularly tough steak. The world blurred back into darkness and stars as Auron felt the muscles in his hand begin to rip. 

"Blind it!" One woman was screaming, and then the creature upon him jerked when a spear came lashing towards them both. The design of its skull caused the point to glance off at an angle. Auron threw his head to the side as he saw the metal turn, and the spear embedded itself in the ground next to his shoulder.

Yanking its neck back triumphantly, the fiend tore the meat in its teeth free at last, and Auron's palm sputtered blood through the white of exposed bone. In that moment, the creature's weight was off-center; Auron swung his other hand up in a hook he had not used since the monastery, and landed it squarely in the beast's concave chest.

The impact was as good as useless. 

Slamming one of its palms upon the guardian's cheek and sending Auron's skull crashing back against the dirt, the fiend tightened its fingers and raked what had once been nails down his face. Auron's feet spasmed as one talon caught in the vulnerability of his eye. Like a child playing with the soft underbelly of a hedgehog, the fiend wriggled its claw in the socket and then plucked its finger free to rear back once more.

Needle teeth grinned. Strings of flesh from Auron's hand were still hanging from its mouth, and it twitched its chin to lick a strip into its mouth with a thin tongue. Then came the roar when a sentry plowed into its side to knock it away from the guardian, sliding off in a clacking of limbs that left Auron's legs stinging where it had clawed him. 

The guards from the perimeter of the village had finally rushed in to aid against the assault. Only six in total, Auron realized, with a sinking in his chest that made him wonder if that meant only six more fiends when the night was done. Two had taken up a defense in front of him. The man who had been reckless enough to try and tackle the fiend directly was trying to back away as carefully as he could, but one arm dangled loose at his side like the melting stems of voluceau hung at the southern gate.

Auron's right hand refused to respond when he ordered it to close properly upon the hilt of his sword. 

Now that he had a better view of it, Auron could see that the fiend had mutated away from a bipedal shape. Its body was spindly, long, limbs bending on extra joints as it crouched back and waited for an opening to attack. The skin left on its skeleton was stretched like improperly tanned leather, spotted in places and cracking. Only its massive head was fully formed into that of a monster. Its chin was painted with Auron's blood as it grinned with a mouth wide enough to snap up a babe whole, but its eyes were far too bright when the guardian found it meeting his gaze. The sentience that remained glittering there twisted Auron's throat.

Will alone drove the guardian's hands to grip the greatsword, bringing it up to a ready stance on his shoulder. He compensated by sinking his balance deeper in both legs as he had been taught. It was harder to sight upon the beast with only one eye, but Auron ignored this, thrusting his shoulders forward to convince his body to follow. 

The posture collapsed in a rush. The greatsword carried itself to its target, rising in a lazy arc that dragged his arms with it. Double-handed it came cleaving down; it met a resistance as thick as spider's silk to its mass, and then plowed into the dirt. Auron stumbled along helplessly behind. Something round and spongy rolled underneath his foot. He heard a screech rise nearby to a peak before it receded.

The jaundiced creature had sprung away past the reach of the torches. It gibbered in pain as it scuttled. The arm that had been severed from it twitched erratically upon the ground before dissolving into the lights of pyreflies.

The guardian felt his weight swaying on his feet. Charissma petals were pasting his eye shut, ruby satin covering his face like a shroud. Hands had rushed to him, touching him all over as voices chirped concern, and then Auron was sinking to the ground. The sword kept him upright enough to kneel. He held fast to it, and the cold metal blessed his face with relief.

Poppy. Hawthorn, Fern.  


The sunset was the color of the tapioca puddings that Luca would sell during blitzball games, and the nubbled clouds gave it the same texture.

The villagers had been grateful for his assistance. They were practical to a fault. It was phrased in roundabout tact to the guardian that they would appreciate his continued presence for as long as the menace persisted, but that they recognized that his physical loss might urge him to leave.

No one wished to speak the crafter's name aloud out of the same pragmatic politeness. All cast glances at the memorial. When Celsia began to claim nightmares, they placed a guard upon her hut as well. 

Auron had seen them while he had been escorted to the local healer. It would have been impossible not to notice the building the girl was kept at, covered in wreaths like a companion mound to her father. The guardian was not certain if this meant she was being treated like one already dead.

An informal tour of the village had shown him the rest of the village's story. They were potters and weavers to a point, but the true strength of Cornel lay in their talents of coaxing blossoms from the nutrient-starved soil of the mountains. Scraggled heather could flourish underneath their journeymens' hands. Even the most frail leaves could unfurl in rocky earth so long as they were attended to by Cornel's people, who still lost more seeds than they managed to grow. 

Despite their isolation, even the people of Cornel could not fully escape the grip of Spira. They took enough pride to fuel their own survival from their ability to adorn death. Now, as danger threatened, they responded in the only way they knew how. Spira's rule of morality was absolute. They would continue to import hundreds of sprouts, and write off their losses as natural fact.  


The morbidly festive air was becoming steadily more grating upon Auron's nerves, but he suspected that he was coming to understand it.

The air in the room that had been cleaned out for him was still choked with dust. The woman apologized profusely as she tried to tidy. Auron shook his head and winced as the motion drove lances of fire through his brain. Enough amenities had been provided in the hut that he would not be inconvenienced. It had taken a great deal of work to convince the healer--a thorn-tough man in his seventies who wore suspicion with ease--that Auron had not desired more than a few stitches to abet the worst of the bleeding. The guardian was still wary around those who knew the craft of life. He had managed to blame it on the pain.

Strings of faded color were abundant even in the storage hut. The garlands of old were kept in boxes wherever there was a free place, and now they overflowed in testament to the years the villagers had seen. No ghosts lingered on the funeral lilies. Only Auron stirred the air, crushing the husks of dried daisies beneath his feet.

The guardian unslung his sword and set it upon the cot, where its weight puckered the sheets inwards. Auron had attended to the ichor on his blade first. Shaking away the helping hands who tried to part him from his weapon, the man had methodically cleaned the stain from the metal until he was satisfied that there were no remnants behind. The habit was one of many taught from experience. His clothing could always be washed later, but metal could pit and later corrode.

He let the sword wait for him on the bed while he tended to cleaning the rest now. 

There was no running water in the hut, but whoever had prepared the room had thought to bring a fresh washbasin, placing it on the table below the mirror already hung here. Absently, the guardian turned the glass towards him while he peeled the well-meaning gauze dressings away from his face. The cut it must be healing cruelly by the feel of it; the nerves were refusing to even register pain. 

The necklaces of flowers strung from the ceiling were wavy lines of color. Dust obscured his reflection, and Auron frowned, closing an eye to focus on the mirror better as he rubbed the grit away with a palm.

Then he opened it again.  


Both eyes looked back. 

When his unbelieving glove touched the surface of the formerly damaged orb, the guardian flinched automatically at the foreign sensation. Terrified at the thought of someone walking in on him, Auron pulled his gloves off and threw them against the edge of the table. He only realized that it should have hurt to do so when he saw the white brand of the bandages on his right hand, and noticed that they were still pristine. When he ripped the layers off, the skin underneath was as smooth as the day he had died.

His face bore no mark of the attack.

_Someone will see this and suspect,_ his mind screamed in panic, _and then they will start to wonder_. What had happened to his wound when they had all seen him injured? Nothing living healed so quickly. Only fiends.

Making a quick decision, Auron flipped through the supplies in the room. His travel pack was lighter than a normal man's should be. Food and drink were secondary to him now, and even the cold had started to affect him less and less. It was a strange evolution into strength. It had not worried him until now.

The short knife he carried for the road came easily to his hand, and he did not hesitate to swing back towards the mirror and draw the knife in a quick motion down his face.

At the renewal of agony, the guardian's fingers loosened around the blade and clapped themselves to the damaged side. Instinct pestered him to stop. His face was pale in the mirror and he took his hand away gingerly, wanting to see the injury at its worst and still hoping that it would not be as bad as it could be. 

The new mark did not resemble the initial wound, and he thought to make a second pass even as the idea of more pain turned his will weak. The important part was the eye itself--if it remained working, the villagers would suspect. 

But the gush of fluid stopped as he watched, obeying the betrayal in his heart that wanted to keep his body intact. Blurry vision reformed into clear. As the pyreflies began to flicker into being around him, seeping back into the slash to heal the damage, Auron grit his teeth, and plunged his fingertips into the corners of the socket.

Plucking his own eye out was easier than he thought when it came down to basic motions. It felt ridiculously like a wet marble. The hard part was not screaming or vomiting, and Auron succeeded at that, save for the keen that had begun to crawl out his throat and claw at his teeth to be freed. His jaw creaked. If he relaxed his mouth a single inch, he would scream himself dry.

The twined threads of the optic nerve resisted as his fingers slipped and scrabbled for grip without trying to actually touch it, and then finally snapped. It hurt far less than he thought it should. He was not sure why the observation turned his stomach over. The room was as warm as a dream, and sparks floated up from his fingers as the eye lost cohesive form. Light circled the guardian. He refused to accept the distant pain, and instead exchanged it for a feverish wonder. 

He had done it wrong, he realized. By not pulling at the nerve itself, he had broken the connection at the eye rather than from his head. The nerve draped down his cheek like cooling lace. 

Giddy thought suggested to the guardian that he could allow himself to heal, and then try again until he managed to get it right. Then reality tried to intrude, along with a choking sound as Auron could not decide if he should continue to try to pull out the remnants of the thin cord trailing from the hollow or if he should just coil it back up and tuck it into the opening like a sachet in a drawer. He tried to stretch it out and shuddered at the pain. The reflection of his face in the mirror jiggled and laughed as the guardian tried to bring the knife to bear upon the strands and failed.

For a sick moment, Auron found himself seriously considering jamming a tiger lily into the opening. He could carry on normal conversation the next day and then forget to keep the lid closed--perhaps he would accidentally blink--and all would scream at the sight of pollen and pistil rooted in his head, petals twice spotted with gore. He could rub the socket clean with white violets that would resemble curdled maggots when he was done.  


The edges of the major wound itself were closing up underneath his fingers as he watched, and he tried to claw at it to keep it open, holding desperately at the ragged gumming of the edges while it slipped away. Clots of tissue built up under his nails as he sought a grip and failed. 

The scream that should have broken loose only slipped free as a dry laugh. Nothing about the act was real enough. The sensations of his body were becoming more and more distant as Auron continued to ignore them. Taking up the knife, he dragged the blade down once, twice, decided with an artist's musing that the eyelid did not have the same look when there was nothing in the socket to fill it out properly, and went for a third time that almost tore the thin flap of flesh completely in two. 

Bile receded from his throat. Auron knew it should burn at the back of his mouth and urge him to retch, that the knife should dig hot fire into his muscles. All that came when he panted, open-mouthed over the basin, was a strained chuckle that sounded like no voice the guardian ever used as his own.

Auron realized then that the lights in his vision were pyreflies swarming, and that his reflection in the glass was becoming distorted.

_Why bother keeping to a body so fragile, when you could choose a freedom in death?_

What was happening to him had also trapped Joshua. When given the option of ignoring the restrictions of a human body, the craftsman had accepted. Joshua had not cared for the appearance he had given up in exchange for not needing to eat or drink, or be wounded. _And why bother being frail? _The thoughts hissed in Auron's mind. _Why not allow the pyreflies to shape you into power?_

_Why remember being human?_

Moving the knife to his left hand, Auron fixed the image of his right firmly in mind before he drove the blade into it, spearing the palm through the tendons to let it squirm like a fish. He did not let himself look away.

The sudden pain drove his stomach to finally clench, and the remnants of the dinner he had forced down began to bubble. Auron's free hand slipped on the edge of the basin when he leaned too hard upon it. Fighting to keep the memory of nausea strong, bright sparks exploding in the nerves of both eyes now--missing and present--Auron tried to trace the balance between life and death as carefully as that of sea and land. 

Blood covered his face. It had spattered over the washbasin and the mirror; the white trim of his coat was dark from the layers of crimson dye it had received. There was not enough water to clean it all away. Grabbing up the bottom of his coat, Auron tried to wipe up the mess and only succeeded in smearing it in desperate circles.

It took use of the entire garment to remove the evidence. The guardian yanked his jacket free, unbuckling the wide belt with clumsy fingers, and worked from wall to floor like a scrubber. He could not be brought back to the healer. He could not afford to be discovered. The dark stain on the ground where his blood had soaked into the soil was an accusation which mocked him, and Auron dropped his coat upon it to hide the mark. He bunched it in his hands and rubbed furiously before he realized that he was only working dirt into the fabric he would have to wear tomorrow, or go bare-armed in the mountain air.

Fear was a familiar stone in his belly as he realized that he was not cold.

Auron brought a knee to his chest and sat there, hunched, as he fought to remember himself as a blind man until dawn.


	3. Chapter 3

Verain braided with hollowroot, saffron for the hunt.  


It was memory that they caught the fiend with in the end.   


The oldest woman in the village had advised them to weave nets from silk, and they had toiled carefully through the hours of noon to night until their eyes turned bloodshot from the strain of using candles to see. Predictably, they had run out of material halfway. The spinners unraveled garments meant for trade, treading the pedals of their wheels with impassive patience as festival wear became undone beneath their fingers. Auron wondered if it felt to them like drowning their own babe in a bucket of dirty well water.  


When five crates of fabric had been taken from the packing carts, the nets had covered the floor of the dining hall from end to end. Barefoot children picked their way between the holes. They swung censers overbrimming with rosepetal smoke, laughing as they made it a game to dance between the multicolored lacework on their toes.   


Next, the craftsmen dipped into their precious stores and wove dried arum plants into the ropes, claiming that the symbolism of the snare-weed would aid in the catch. The bracelets of the men working closest to the guardian were stained the color of the rusted blood inside his jacket, and Auron wondered if the same kind of dust would crumble from the beads should they rub against the lines.  


But it had been the daughter who had given the trap the final touch. She had threaded white flowers amidst the ropes. They were so fragile upon the stems that, when the guards reeled in the nets to gather them up, the rain of shed blossoms looked like snow.   


They had set Celsia up on a platform in the middle of the village as bait, ringing her about with unlit torches that were soaked in enough pitch to drip down their casings. Her hair held garlands. Bracelets of dried ivy coiled about both her arms, and in the moon's light, it appeared as if her veins had exploded through the skin to stain it with dark ink.  


The fiend had been drawn by the scent of her name scattered on the dirt paths. Taking the last of Celsia's flowers and wetting them in oil to stick their paper-thin petals to earth, the village sent runners to strew them up and down the roads leading to the gates. They came back panting. None went missing.  


The silence wrapped itself around the squatting huts, and they waited.  


It came with six paws this time. Whatever of its fellow monstrosities the fiend had devoured in the wilderness had given it pyreflies enough to reform from the damages given to it in its previous encounter with the guardian. Its doubled hips slid like oiled bearings as it crawled into the village.  


Auron had been stationed in the blinds formed from carts and screens dragged to block the windows of the nearest huts. His robe rubbed stiff against him when he moved; waiting there, half his face bound up securely with bandages, the guardian imagined that he could smell the blood on him. It was more comfort than the flowers which stank of overbloomed sweetness to his nose. He thought to remember what fragrances were pleasant to a mortal and what were not, and then dismissed the effort.  


And then the fiend announced itself by blotting out the starlight when it passed, and they knew it to be time.  


Torches had sputtered when asked to light, but finally obeyed; the guards of the first advance lunged to set the brands snatched from the hearths to the oil. The fire exploded in a ring about the village center, and the fiend was left inside.  


It snapped its jaws then and swung its head, keeping its weight low as its teeth chose the way. The suddenness of the light killed night vision. The guards left betrayed from their ambush dropped their brands, took up their swords, and sparks rolled across the summer-warmed dirt to reflect upon panicked metal.  


Given the choice between steel and sweetness, the creature chose the latter.  


The first row of nets snapped up as the fiend leaped towards Celsia, rising like a wall of vines into the air. The men on either side assigned to work the pulleys jerked like puppets at the impact. The beast plowed through the initial barrier, meeting the second row and then the third before it slowed at last. Clawed fingers plunged through the gaps in the nets, and reached out for the child.  


Its hands clenched on empty air.  


Celsia did not scream.  


She watched them as they thrust spears into its body and as it screeched her name in a carrion howl, reaching a taloned paw through the weave towards her. Not once did she flinch when one man had to lever his entire weight on the wooden shaft in his hands, and the creature shook itself like a wet wolf and caused its attacker to go flying.  


When the guardian joined the fight, the beast once known as Joshua bared its teeth to him in memory of the flesh it had taken from him. Auron had ignored its eyes, ignored the gleam he feared was recognition, and focused only on the sword and the blood he swore should wet his palm when he tried to grip it.  


It laughed once when they had managed to pin it. The sound was far too human for the hisses its throat had made; several guards flinched away, hands lifting to cover their ears rather than acknowledge the fiend's past. That had given it a chance to struggle again. Auron alone had not been unsettled by the noise, and had finally met its gaze without fear as his greatsword came swinging down.  


The pyreflies that sprouted from the monster's severed head drifted on the air like dandelion fluff.   


Celsia had been bathed in them. The lights rippled across a form as rigid as a statue; her eyes stared forwards without acknowledgment even as her father's spirit finally vanished at last.  


Auron knelt by her afterwards. His sword was still coated in the ichor of the fiend, and, in a moment of shame, he thrust it to the side. "I'm... sorry that you had to see that happen."  


The girl had not blinked once. "Why?"  


Strangely discomforted by the way Celsia's eyes trained themselves upon him, Auron looked down. Mountain practicality, he could respect, but the guardian had once believed that death held a limited set of reactions. Complete indifference from an eight-year old was not one of them.   


"I know it wasn't my father anymore," Celsia supplied in the silence of the man's thoughts, her voice thin and high and clear. "It was a monster."  


The once-guardian forced a smile. "Yes," he agreed. "It was only that."  


The smell of fresh gravedirt came then to Auron's nose, and he looked up to see one of the guards digging his spear into the ground, crushing a stray petal beneath it.  


He left Cornel before the next mourning. 


End file.
